Lyte's Last-Minute Governors Ball Ticket Rescue

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Last week’s Governors Ball Festival in New York City saw an attendance of nearly 50,000 per day from Friday to Sunday. With a high demand for a massive lineup featuring Outkast, Jack White, and Vampire Weekend, a festival of this size is a hotbed for scalpers who resell tickets on secondary markets like StubHub for astronomical prices.

Fortunately, New York-based ticket reselling startup Lyte saw the opportunity to use its unique platform to benefit sellers looking to sell off their unused tickets and fans looking to find tickets right before and during the festival. On the Thursday before the festival, Lyte began buying tickets back from fans unable to attend and reselling them at face value to an eager waitlist of fans looking for affordable tickets. Lyte also allowed festivalgoers the option of selling and buying partial passes, is they were only able to attend one or two days of the festival.

Have extra #Govball2014 tix? Sell to Lyte pain-free THRU the festival http://t.co/e84yjDdNnh. + Waitlist is open to buy below face value.

— Lyte (@UseLyte) June 6, 2014

With over 1,000 unsold tickets sitting on secondary markets prior to the festival, and an estimate of at least 500 on StubHub alone, many New Yorkers missed the opportunity to attend the festival due to high ticket prices. However, Lyte’s solution offered fair, face-value tickets for eager fans, and outperformed sales on StubHub, paying ticket sellers up to 26% more than they would have earned after fees. Despite scalpers’ attempts to inflate the market, the chances of reselling tickets on StubHub after the festival began were as low as 1 in 10, and only as high as 1 in 3.

Lyte, on the other hand, responded to 100% of ticket resellers, with an 80% acceptance rate of Lyte’s offers. Lyte sold 100% of the tickets they bought back, at or below face value. From the angle of customer service, the average time to send offers to sellers was 8 minutes, at times as low as 2 owing to Lyte’s pricing automation.

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Lyte’s platform has proven to be an outstanding alternative to the unfair practices of scalpers across StubHub and Craiglist. Music fans are often swindled for last-minute tickets, priced far beyond face value, as scalpers deceive buyers into believing tickets are far more scarce than they actually are.

Lyte’s technology will hopefully become implemented in venues across America, so that fans can easily exchange ticket ownership hours or even minutes before a concert at fair prices.

“We’re just doing it right,” says Antony Taylor, Lyte founder, “This festival is about New Yorkers enjoying great music. We want to see a packed house all weekend long.

Read more about Lyte and founder Ant Taylor, visit their website to sell your unused tickets, and follow Lyte on Twitter.